Haskell vs Scala

Difference between Haskell vs Scala

Haskell is a general purpose programming language which is standardized and has pure functional programming features. It was developed and designed by Lennart Augustsson, John Hughes, Paul Hudak, John Launchbury, Simon Peyton Jones, Philip Wadler, and Erik Meijer. Its typing discipline is strong, static, inferred, and has no strict semantics. It was licensed under Clause 3 BSD license. Its features are lazy, non-strict and modular programming. It first appeared in the year 2010. Its file extension is .hs or .lhs and supports cross-platform operating system.

Scala is a general-purpose programming language which has strong functional programming features. It is a static, inferred, strong and structural programming language. Its’ file extension names are .scala or .sc. It first appeared in the year 2004. It supports different platforms such as JVM, JavaScript, and LLVM etc. It is most popular for the client-server kind of applications. It was licensed under Clause 3 BSD license. The latest version of Scala is released in September 2018. It was designed by Martin Odersky. The source code of Scala has converted Java bytecode which can be run on JVM. Scala has features similar to that of programming languages such as Haskell, Standard ML, and Scheme. It was developed by Programming Methods of Laboratory.

Head To Head Comparison Between Haskell vs Scala (Infographics)

Below is the top 9 difference between Haskell vs Scala

Key Differences between Haskell vs Scala

Both Haskell vs Scala performance are recommended options in the business. Let us examine some of the key difference between Haskell vs Scala:

In Haskell, everything is an expression and has immutable variable by default, full type inference, interpreted and compiled implementations whereas Scala has features such as structural typing, dynamic typing etc.

Haskell gives greater productivity, high performance at runtime, a large library and tool support ecosystem and a steep learning curve whereas Scala has clever community though not larger than Haskell and can easily be transited to Java, C++ or C# with greater performance.

Haskell has a compilation model as Glasgow Haskell Compilation (GHC) Model whereas Scala has a compilation model which is similar to that of C++ and Java.

Haskell does not support multiple libraries or third-party tools whereas Scala supports many libraries compatible with JVM.

Haskell has pure functional programming features that support cross-platform operating systems or different platforms whereas Scala supports interoperability with Java and re-usage of large libraries or third-party tools available.

Haskell is more suitable for high algorithm work in terms of coding and strong functional features whereas Scala has impure functional programming features.

Haskell has simple syntax and easy to use with simple features whereas Scala has complicated syntax and complex features.

Haskell is concise, safe and faster to use whereas Scala is also concise, fast and safer with many libraries support.

Haskell has first-class functions and pure whereas Scala is strict and impure to use in terms of functional programming features.

Haskell has GHC compiler which has advanced features in the system which do not present in Scala whereas Scala has strict name annotation feature by default.

Haskell vs Scala Comparison Table

As you can see there are many Comparison between Haskell vs Scala. Let’s look at the top Comparison between Haskell vs Scala –

The basis of comparison Between Haskell vs Scala

Haskell

Scala

Definition

It is a general-purpose programming language which has pure functional programming features.

It is compiled to JVM bytecode and is compatible with Java Platform.

Usage

It is used in the case of lazy evaluation.

It is used as a functional programming language and object-oriented language.

Features

It has first-class functions and parametric polymorphism.

It has immutability, type inference, and concurrency control.

Platform

It supports any operating systems or platforms.

It supports JVM, JavaScript, and LLVM.

Syntax

The syntax is strong typing.

It has strong and inferred discipline in its syntax.

Community

It has Haskell Community with a large number of individual developers.

It has a community which is smaller compared to the Haskell

License

It was licensed under Clause 3 BSD license

It was licensed under Clause 3 BSD license

Functional

It is a purely functional programming language

It is a functional and object-oriented programming language.

Documentation

It provides documentation with offline support and instant search.

It has in-depth documentation covering all the functional programming features.

Conclusion – Haskell vs Scala

Scala vs Haskell both are functional programming languages whereas Scala support object-oriented programming language features as well. The requirement in the object-oriented language along with functional programming language gives weight to the Scala. The choice of the programming language depends on the functionalities and features as required to make the application work efficiently by making the trade-off choice in an effective manner. Haskell has template Haskell and Scala has Macros in its’ features.

Scala is mostly used and recently Scala is allowed in providing an environment to be run on JavaScript or JVM platforms. So Scala can be considered for any kind of application requirement in the case of larger applications that need faster development scope and easier to develop complex services or applications where the case of optimization, messaging features and many other efficient techniques are available in Java Enterprise environment. Haskell is a purely functional programming language and supports powerful functional programming language features.

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